2006 was arguably the year of the DS. PSP received some great games, most notably Tekken: Dark Resurrection and Monster Hunter Portable, but DS had the far better year.

This year we can expect DS to start to slow down and PSP to dig in and show it' s staying power as the games we were initially promised are starting to arrive. PSP will allow for the closet thing to console gaming on the move yet.

We' ve already had two GTA games that have shown just what Sony' s first handheld is technically capable of. We' ve had a good number of titles spanning every possible genre, and yet we haven' t had games that really reflect their console roots. The two Metal Gear games we' ve had so far have been quirky card battling games and not exactly what we wanted. Sure they had style but we wanted a portable version of the console games and they' re only just about ready to supply it.

UMD movies may be dead in the water but the gaming side of things is about to reach fever pitch. In the first half of the year we will receive fully fledged version of Oblivion, Virtua Tennis 3, Crazy Taxi, Ghost Recon, Ratchet & Clank, Metal Gear, Test Drive, The Warriors, Ace Combat etc.. and sequels to Guilty Gear, Death Jr, Burnout, Prince of Persia, Tony Hawks, Tomb Raider and more.

At some point, the standalone PSone web-based download center will go live whereby a PS3 won' t be required to enable playing PSone games via emulation on PSP. That alone means PSP will have a better year than DS. The ability to go back and play much loved classics or try games you may have missed the first time around is something Sony should be praised for. I mean, i' ll be able to replay Vagrant Story and Resident Evil 2, and i' ll be able to do it on my PSP.

The towards the end of the year we will get our hands on a " proper" Final Fantasy game, an awesome looking Silent Hill, FlatOut, 300: march to Glory and god only knows what else. If they drop the price and accessories like the PSP camera and GPS receiver take off and developers utilize them in games then it' ll be even better. All Sony need to do is set up downloadable movies from the web-based Sony store along with the PSone games and they' ll be unbeatable.